Busy, focused, and productive are the best ways to describe February in terms of my time spent working to share things with the Internet.

This Blog:I guess "two posts and a retrospective" is my new M.O. for this blog, but there's nothing wrong with that. My attention was directed elsewhere, so the lightness of content here should not be interpreted as a lack of interest or inspiration. Truth be told, I was so busy with GameCola and YouTube that I eagerly wrote up half of the last post and then completely forgot about the rest of it until almost the end of the month.- Retrospective: January 2014- Living Quantum Leap-Snake? Snake! SNAAAAAKE!!!

YouTube:With my preparation of the Final Fantasy RPGcast posts keeping me in a recording and audio-editing mindset, and with the completion of the RPGcast posts freeing up my spare time substantially, February was the perfect time to get back on the horse and continue my Mega Man 7 playthrough. I'm already brewing up ideas for the next RPGcast, but I intend to make YouTube a priority so that I'll finish this series soon. Otherwise, you're getting a Mega Man 7-themed April Fools' gag for the third year in a row, and that's just sad.GeminiLaser:-Mega Man 7 - Part 4: Brothers at Arms

The Backloggery:Adventure games have officially become my new staple, with RPGs occupying a more regular spot in my gaming lineup than they have for some time. In an effort to expand my library of space shooters, a genre I only really started getting into relatively recently, I poked around the Wii Virtual Console library for something I could pick up with the spare Wii Points I'd had kicking around since filling out Mega Man 10's DLC roster. For the first time in a long time, though, I became so fed up with a game that I actually removed it from my library altogether. I can deal with mediocrity and unfair challenges, but when bonkers camera controls render the game almost entirely unplayable, I draw the line.

New: - Final Soldier (VC)

Started: - Sam & Max: Season 2: Beyond Time and Space: Episode 3: Night of the Raving Dead (PC) - Sam & Max: Season 2: Beyond Time and Space: Episode 4: Chariots of the Dogs (PC) - Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (WW) - Pac-Man World 2 (GCN)

Well, Google, you win. I've resisted you at every turn, publicly decried your decisions and methods, and conscientiously objected to your unwelcome changes with whatever clever subversions I could muster. Finally you've made it so inconvenient to not have Google+ that any further resistance would defeat the purpose of using your services in the first place.I couldn't comment on my own videos. I had dozens, if not hundreds, of unanswered questions and dangling conversations from my viewers that begged for a response, and you took away my right and privilege to communicate if I didn't sign up for Google+. But then you nullified those conversations without warning—suddenly, Google+ or not, it was physically impossible to respond to any comments posted before a certain date. Was this part of the plan all along, or were you so eager to push your unloved Facebook competitor on us that streamlining the transition didn't matter?I resented the theft of my voice. I ran out of ways to be upset at you, Google. First the obnoxious popups about connecting my accounts, then the subterfuge that led me to unwittingly set up a Google+ account, then the horrendously organized options pages that brought me this close to inadvertently deleting my entire YouTube channel, then the denial of my basic ability to talk to my fans without playing your little game, then the denial of my basic ability to talk to my fans who'd been waiting for months or merely minutes for a response. No amount of resistance, criticism, or outright complaining could satisfy my rage. I had been grumpy before about change for the sake of change; this time your agenda was clear, and this time, I was angry. This is not the creature of habit talking who'd prefer to leave well enough alone; this is the person who despises being bullied and taken for a fool by someone he trusts.Today, I grudgingly but willingly signed up for your Google+. Today, you deprived me of one of the greatest joys I have from making videos: checking my e-mail the day after posting a long-awaited video to discover a deluge of subscriber and comment notifications, and taking my time to read through and appreciate each and every one. Today, after posting a video that's been in the works for two months, my inbox was empty.I don't receive notification e-mails if I'm not signed up for Google+, you see, despite there being e-mail notification options in YouTube whether I've connected Google+ or not. You ever put on a performance only to have the audience stare at you instead of clap when you're finished? That's what this felt like. And navigating to the comments section of the video to see if anybody had said anything was like listening to the audience members talk amongst themselves on their way out of the theater. I was no longer involved in my own videos. I had become a cyber stork who left newborn videos on my subscribers' doorsteps before disappearing from their lives. So I swallowed my righteous pride and admitted defeat. Making videos isn't worth the effort without the human connection, but the human connection, I thought, might be more important than refusing to compromise my principles in the face of a corporation who isn't even listening.I had fun populating my Google+ page with ridiculous information, claiming to be a Super Fighting Robot who works at Dr. Light's Lab and who went to school for special weapons use at the Challenge stages of Mega Man 10. Under better circumstances, Google could have persuaded me to at least create an account for the sake of better publicity—after all, I signed up for Twitter, which I neither like nor fully understand, so that people who prefer Twitter can get automatic updates about my blogging and YouTube activity that way. I'm not unwilling to try new things, but their value needs to be made clear to me if they're not forced upon me. As it stands, I feel dirty for joining Google+ because I neither wanted to nor was truly forced to. It's a little like being blackmailed—do I give in to the villain's demands to maintain the status quo, or do I preserve my sense of morality at the expense of something potentially greater?I started to get anxious when, after two hours of setting up Google+, I still wasn't receiving e-mail notifications—as though I'd sacrificed my principles for nothing. That situation righted itself after enough time had passed, but I'm still finding brand-new comments I cannot respond to, and if I never have to wade through all those settings menus again, it'll be too soon. To me, that's the big tip-off that Google+ was never intended to be so integrated with YouTube: multiple settings menus that all seem to say the same thing and have a delay of several hours before the changes in one place take effect at the other place.So I'm on Google+ now. It's not the end of the world. Maybe I'll end up using it or even liking it. One thing's for certain, though: Unless Google gets their act together and either streamlines or apologizes for this mess, it won't take much for a man who's already abandoned his principles to abandon the company that pushed him over the edge.

My predictions last month about what I'd have to show for myself this month might've been ambitious, but they weren't entirely off the mark. Some of the specifics didn't come to fruition—I'm still working on the next installment of my Mega Man 7 playthrough—but gee golly did my other accomplishments balance out my oracular oversights. In short, November was pretty awesome, if not in terms of quality then in terms of sheer productivity.

GameCola:Funny; I thought I'd be writing more for GameCola and less for this blog. Partly because I haven't been playing too many new games to write about, and partly because I've been spending all my GameCola time on making videos and editing articles, the podcast is the only item here that really counts (and it's definitely one of my better podcasts). The video post was slapped together to conclude our extended celebration of The END DAY, and the review was written at the end of October, so I feel like a slacker. Of course, behind the scenes, I was laying the foundation for our next RPG podcast, too...Podcasts:- GC Podcast #68: Of Consoles and PeripheralsReviews:-King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (PC)Videos:-Crystalis: NES vs. GBC

The Backloggery:This might not look like much, but that's because I've been spending most of my gaming time on longer games that can't be beaten in only a few sittings (unless you're insanely good or in full-on marathon mode). Furthermore, I've been spending some time working toward full completion status on the occasional game that I beat months or years ago, and that generally takes longer, what with all the secret-searching and additional dying on Hard Mode and whatnot. Next month should be pretty substantial, though.New:- Mega Pony (PC)Beat:- Mega Pony (PC)Completed:- Mr. Robot (Steam)

November feels like another turning point in my writing and recording careers; I'm excited to see how things develop from here.

To answer the question posed at the end of my previous post: Yes, I can expect to keep a sense of perspective when I'm yo-yoing between two radically different approaches to recording videos. But not when it's almost 5:00 in the morning and I haven't slept yet.It's a new day (technically the same day; I only wrote the post about 13 hours ago), I'm well-rested, I've spent the day relaxing, and I'm in better spirits now. Watching what my wife and I recorded last night, it's almost a totally different video than I remember. Sometimes—and I should know this by now—the best thing to cure a case of nagging self-doubt is to walk away from whatever's causing it for a little while.All's well again.

My wife told me a story about a study that was performed where one group of artists was told to produce one work of art in a certain time frame, and another group was told to produce as many works as possible in the same time frame. The result was a bunch of stressed-out artists in the first group with gorgeous art and a bunch of contented artists in the second group with a broad range of successes and failures. I've been thinking about this story lately as I've been recording videos at a faster rate than usual.In the last month, I've recorded more footage for YouTube than I have in the last year: a full playthrough of the Game Boy Color adaptation of Crystalis, the first third of my next Mega Man 7 video, and two hours now of an impromptu playthrough of Mega Pony. At the same time, I've released more material of dubious entertainment value in the last month than ever before. It's been both refreshing and disheartening to crank out new videos at the speed the rest of the Internet does.My original plan for Crystalis was to play it on The END DAY as is my yearly custom, but to livestream it and post it to the GameCola YouTube channel. After extensive research and testing, I determined that my current setup was unsuitable for livestreaming, so I fell back on my usual method of recording video footage and adding retrospective commentary. Having learned from my Space Quest 0 playthrough that was supposed to last a weekend and turned into a few months, I made a commitment to myself to record each video's commentary in a single take, unless I said something so catastrophically stupid that only a re-take could salvage it.For the most part, I was able to keep my vow, though one or two videos required a couple takes or a few breaks while I came up with anything to say. Overall, I think everything turned out fine, but I don't have the sense of satisfaction that I had after completing Space Quest 0 or Deja Vu before that. There are funny moments, and I think I bring up some interesting points every now and again, but the gameplay is neither hilarious nor impressive enough to be all that interesting on its own. It's really the commentary that drives my Crystalis videos, and there are large swaths of it that I'd re-record in a heartbeat. Overall, I think the video series is entertaining enough, but as the only full playthrough of this version currently available on YouTube, I think the viewing community deserves better.Speeding through Crystalis allowed me to get back to Mega Man 7 before too much time had passed, however. It took me more than a year to release the teaser trailer for the video series, so I've been trying my hardest to get at least one new video per month to my fans—because it's my favorite video game series and because my viewers have come to expect a certainly level of quality from the gameplay and commentary, it takes me a long time to get my Mega Man videos to a point where I'm satisfied with them.I was on fire with the commentary after Crystalis wrapped up; it normally takes me about one hour to generate and perfect one minute of commentary, and I'm usually only good for an hour or two before recording fatigue sets in, but I breezed through the first 3-1/2 minutes in a single sitting. Since then, it's been almost impossible to get back to it—I can think of things to say for the section I'm in, but nothing feels even remotely interesting. It doesn't help that I feel like I need to deliver extra-perfect commentary to make up for rushing through Crystalis, another one of my all-time favorite games (the NES version, at least), which didn't receive the recording attention I would've given it if I weren't so far behind on MM7.Then, on a whim, I started recording Mega Pony with my wife. The short version is that one of my fellow GameCola staff members alerted me to the existence of a Mega Man / My Little Pony crossover fangame, and when my wife learned about it as well, she got excited and begged me to play it for her, as platformers are not her strong suit. About 30 seconds into the game, we both decided this would be too good a recording opportunity to pass up, so I set things up to record my first-ever honest-to-goodness blind "Let's Play" video. Both of us are tremendously pleased with the result—the commentary is frequently informative and funny, and some of the gameplay is downright hysterical.We sat down to record Part 2 tonight, and neither one of us is feeling all that great about it. Sure, I beat several stages, but I also died repeatedly in the same few spots. Sure, we both made a few funnies, but most of what I remember about the commentary is me trying to form a deep thought about one of the other Mega Man games I've played, getting so distracted by my thought process that I fell into a spike pit, and my wife groaning about how I died again. The shame is that this is supposed to be a live, blind playthrough, so any editing or re-recording would defeat the whole purpose of the video.Crystalis, Mega Man 7, and Mega Pony represent three different kinds of recording styles, and it's odd for me to be bouncing between them. I feel like an artist who was assigned to both groups at once from my wife's story, and because I can't focus on succeeding at one or the other, I'm failing at both. I'm probably being too harsh on myself, as is my tendency when it comes to creative projects, but then it's easier to accept rejection if it turns out my self-criticism isn't unfounded after all.I've said many times before that my videos don't need to be perfect; they just need to be entertaining. With all the recording I've done in the last month, it's hard to tell anymore what qualifies as entertaining. I'm deliberating over every word for Mega Man 7 and spouting whatever comes to mind for everything else; can I really expect to keep a sense of perspective when I'm yo-yoing between two radically different approaches?

I do not want Google+. I am perfectly content to be in a perpetual state of mild dissatisfaction with Facebook; I have no need or desire to add another social media account to my list of things I'll forget to update. I keep telling you this, but you keep asking. And you're dishonest about it, too. You created a Google+ account for me without my consent, tricked me into linking it to my YouTube account, and let me get this close to permanently deleting four years of videos and comments in an effort to destroy this thing I've told you repeatedly I do not want.

Now you harass me every time I log in. Change your name, you tell me. I like my name the way it is. No, really, you say. You've got options. It's a choice, you say. Then why are you still bothering me after I've told you a half-dozen times that I want to keep things the way they are? Is that choice, which you extended to me, not a valid one? And if I truly have a choice, why does every option result in a Google+ account I did not ask for being linked to my account? Either force the change on me like you always do, or leave me alone—this pretense of choice is a waste of my time.

Google, I'm sure you know about the roughly 2,790,000,000 search results that come up on your popular search engine for the phrase, "i don't want google+". That's around one hit for every three people on Earth. Going strictly by the numbers, there are more people who don't want Google+ than people who don't want to go to war. About 1,880,000,000 results for "i don't want to go to war", Google. I realize I'm bandying numbers and taking liberties with how I use your data, but you've been taking liberties with my data, so I feel it's only fair.

If you'd like to argue that it's my choice to use your free services, that's fine. In that regard, I don't have a leg to stand on. If what you're doing is that big a problem for me, I should take my business elsewhere. I assure you: the moment that precariously balanced scale tips so that the bad grossly outweighs the good, I am gone. But I don't want to leave. You offer a service that makes it easy to share my creativity and connect with people all around the world. That's why I'm telling you all this. You were a better business, Google, when "don't be evil" was a creed to live by. Now you resort to the tactics of snake oil salesmen and fast-talking used car dealers to push your innovations on us. Now it's your decision, not ours, whether or not we like what you have to offer. Don't be surprised if you wake up one day to find someone whose creativity and quality of service are appealing enough for the masses to turn away from you, the biggest name in town. After all, Google, how many search engines have been banished to the forgotten corners of Wikipedia since you showed up? Do people still use Lycos?

Listen to your users, Google. Listen to the people who like Google+. Listen to the people who are screaming at you to leave them alone. And for Pete's sake, listen to me when I tell you for the seventh time that I don't want to change my username.

As you know if you've been following me for any length of time, I keep myself busy with plenty of online projects, and I like to recap what I've done each month in a handy link post. I'm not one to suddenly break with tradition, so here you go:

Not that I wrote all that much, but August was characterized by reflections and analyses. Anime, conventioning, and the joint geek blog I worked on before coming here received the kind of writing attention they seldom do. It was a nice change of pace, and I'm glad to have sorted out my thoughts on virtual paper—writing is just as often a chance to share my thoughts as it is to figure out what my thoughts are in the first place.

This was an all-time low for me. In the four-and-a-half years I've been writing for this videogame website, I've never been so lazy and uninvolved. Granted, most of my creative energies were focused on YouTube, but that doesn't excuse this poor showing—my mundane Q&AmeCola response was submitted at the end of July, so I officially only wrote two sentences. My goal for next month is to get back on the obscure gaming horse and resume writing and editing articles like I mean it.Columns:-Q&AmeCola: NES Games RemasteredVideos:- GC Podcasts #47-49 on YouTube: The Best Uncut Games Pronounced "Crystalis"

This is where my attention was. The looooooong-awaited beginning of my Mega Man 7 playthrough, collaborative commentary with the GameCola crew that makes me out to be a terrible person, and the first half of the game I've been looking forward to seeing most from the all-day livestreaming Mega Man marathon my buddy and I did at the end of last year. It's exciting to have my recording efforts feel more like a side project again than a side note like they've been.

Having been on an adventure game kick for several months, and having recently completed the all-consuming Mega Man X: Command Mission, I was ready to break into the collection of vintage RPGs gifted to me back in April. Old games I don't have a problem with; awkward interfaces and gameplay that's markedly different from what I'm accustomed to can be a challenge.

I'm normally anti-walkthrough unless I get hopelessly stuck, but this latest batch of games has inspired me to adopt a policy of (a) consulting the manual before tackling anything remotely puzzle-oriented, and (b) referring to a walkthrough at the first sign of trouble in any game that's not my usual fare and/or is starting to overstay its welcome. I've been much happier for it.New:- Chrono Cross (PS)

Over the last several days I've been working on a post about Otakon 2013, the 20th annual anime, manga, and general Japanese culture festival that once again saw Baltimore's Inner Harbor overrun with tens of thousands of otaku, many of them in costume.To hear me tell about the highlights, you'd think it was a great convention—an off-the-wall Lupin III movie, a panel on the evolution of anime throughout the past century, a tasty bacon cheeseburger and handmade vanilla Coke at Johnny Rockets, a new Mega Man X4 keychain for myself, plenty of time spent with friends I haven't seen in fiveever (that's like forever, plus one)... To hear me spin the complete yarn, however, you'd be depressed and possibly bored by the end of it—public transportation fiascos, mood-wrecking delays and setbacks, frequent surprises unsuitable to the squeamish, anxiety and annoyance about situations involving other people... It was cathartic to get my thoughts and feelings out on virtual paper, but especially after having my wife read through a near-final draft, I came to realize that this post was really only meant for me. I had tried to write it for an audience, but it wasn't meant for one.

I notice I haven't written anything here for over two weeks. I've barely done anything for GameCola in the last month. My attention's been elsewhere: after more than a year of unexpected delays and technical headaches, I've finally had the time, ability, and motivation to work on my Mega Man 7 playthrough videos for YouTube. I've been recording every few nights for the last few months, and the first proper installment in the series went live last week. It's been a joy to read the comments on the new video. Even with a scant bit of criticism, the overwhelming consensus is that this video was worth the wait. It has met, if not exceeded, everyone's expectations. At the time I'm writing this, the video has 3,322 views, 247 Likes, and 0 Dislikes.

That is very, very cool.

Now the pressure is on to make the next video just as good, if not better. Normally this is not a concern—as long as I'm having fun making a video, that's all that matters. Whether it's recording or writing, I try to generate the kind of content I'd want to see, and it's usually the case that other people like to see the same things I do. That's why I ultimately scrapped my Otakon post—it was necessary to write it, but I didn't want to read it.

As I'm recording the next video, I need to remind myself that this isn't a competition. I don't need to outdo myself. And I don't need to "give the fans what they want," as though I can read minds or trust my more vocal viewers to always speak for everyone. What matters is a finished product I'm happy with. Something I'd be excited to show others if it weren't my own. After all, that's what got me into blogging and recording in the first place—the desire to share the things I'm excited about with others. I think I might've misplaced my enthusiasm in the last few days—I've been more interested in the act of sharing than the thing I'm sharing.

Did I enjoy Otakon? Yeah, parts of it. It ended on a high note, for sure. Maybe I'll tell you about the good stuff someday. Maybe I've learned some lessons about conventioning that'll help me from ever reaching the same low points again. Maybe this is all you'll get out of me about Otakon unless you ask me in person. It's hard to say for sure. For now, I'm content to be writing again—writing what I feel like writing, instead of what I feel I should be writing. It makes a world of difference.

I don't necessarily mind losing. Sometimes it's my own darn fault—I bet against poor odds, discarded something I should have saved, didn't pay enough attention to the board, got sloppy trying to rush through a stage, etc. If I can blame myself for the failure, and learn from my mistakes for next time, I'm usually cool with it. If my opponent is simply better than me, I'm often okay with that, too. Provided I've played my best, I don't mind conceding to someone who has more experience or natural talent, so long as they're not being a jerk about winning. I can even live with the times when I should win, but my opponent gets lucky or bests me at a critical moment that turns the tide of the game. I play games to have fun; winning is merely a bonus, but one that should be both visible at all times, no matter how far out of reach it may be.

I have been losing a lot these past few weeks, and I'm getting tired of it. Pardon me for a few paragraphs as I get this tirade out of my system.

After spending hours trying to record the perfect 10-minute boss rush for my YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 7, I finally had a good, useable take...which I had to throw out when I discovered the video was unwatchably choppy: I had overlooked a single setting I always have in place before recording. After hours of retrying, I finally came up with an equally good take...which I had to throw out because being on Skype earlier that day had recalibrated my audio settings, so the clip was recorded without sound. As much as I enjoy MM7, I wasn't spending two days straight replaying the same 10-minute span of the game just for fun. I was playing to win, and I lost. Twice.

Having recently played 8-player Mario Party 7 with some friends, I've been on a Mario Party kick, trying to unlock more of what the games have to offer in advance of the next time we have guests over. My wife and I have both been chipping away at various games in the series, and we've discovered one critical flaw with the solo Story Modes: nearly all the 1 vs. 1 Duel games are a matter of button mashing or sheer luck, and the computer doesn't have to physically press the buttons on the controller, fight off button-mashing fatigue, or guess which rope is arbitrarily the right one to pull. Humans need to overcome their corporeal handicap before they can stand a chance against a computer opponent of supposedly equal skill. There's little joy in playing a game when the challenges are deliberately or—worse—unthinkingly rigged in favor of an opponent who should be able to hold their own.

Not even the mindless grinding of Mega Man X: Command Mission could provide me a break from losing. Now that I've beaten the main game, I'm off to clean up the last of the optional material—Force Metal recipes and Treasure Tokens and rare item drops. As close as I am to marking this game off my Backloggery as Completed, I've been willing to put in the extra hours to have another Mega Man game under my belt that I've played inside and out, especially when it's mostly a matter of following a checklist and waiting for enemies to drop rare items. Well, last night I spent something like an hour and a half going through different paths of the Eternal Forest, which is an enemy gauntlet with no save points in sight. Halfway through the last battle before the exit, my GameCube crashed. That lovely black screen with white text that instructs you to consult your manual to see what the problem is. Sorry, Nintendo; my manual's not going to tell me how to recover nearly two hours of gameplay and that rare item drop I'd been trying forever to get. I lost again.

Then I decided to try fighting the first of nine optional post-game bosses again. The first time I'd tried was a disaster: no matter how much damage my party pumped out, the boss was recovering to maximum health every round. Clearly, I would need to level up, and come back to the battle with my strongest characters using their strongest attacks right out of the gate. That's exactly what I did, and it helped—it took the boss two rounds, instead of one, to get back to max health. I lost again.

Unlike any other boss battle, there was no way to salvage this—a single turn doing anything other than railing on the boss, and you might as well have marched into the battle with half your health and all your Hyper Mode activations exhausted. Like that accursed Neo Shinryu dragon boss in Final Fantasy V Advance, or—actually, all the examples I'm coming up with are from Final Fantasy games—you need to have a very specific party lineup with exactly the right equipment follow a precise strategy with no room for error or improvisation. Otherwise, you won't survive the first round, let alone the entire battle. A difficult fight requiring adaptable strategies is a challenge; a boss like this is a gimmick, and it strains my patience to guess at the exact combination of factors required to reveal that victory is possible in the first place.

All the walkthroughs say this is an easy boss. Just do these seven things that have to be executed perfectly, and he's a cinch. Silly me, I'm only doing six of these things and can't seem to get his health below maximum for more than fifteen seconds at a clip. You'll forgive me if I'm not enjoying blind trial-and-error to see if this strategy will keep me from having to reload the game, spend five minutes reorganizing my party, spend five minutes getting from the save point to the boss, and find out in the first few turns that all my preparations were a waste of time.

But hey, I at least managed to shut off the game without tripping over the power cord, so maybe I'm not a total failure after all.

Back in college, I started a little project to watch Star Trek. What started out as a simple matter of borrowing the first season of Next Generation from the library soon turned into a mission that would make V'Ger proud: Buy all that is buyable; watch all that is watchable. I set out to own every film and season of every Star Trek, systematically watching them with my roommate, my family, my wife, and anyone else who would join me on this five-year mission. Which turned into two five-year missions. Which...very well may turn into three five-year missions if I get too distracted by Doctor Who.

But last night was a triumph, for my wife and I finished Deep Space Nine.

I'm no stranger to long, drawn-out projects. Look at any of my Mega Man videos for YouTube—this latest recording endeavor, a playthrough of Mega Man 7, had been on hold for over a year. But in the last two months, I went from having only the intro stage recorded to having everything but the final stage and end credits. Over the course of this past week, my wife and I marathoned the entire second half of DS9's seventh and final season. More than likely, tonight we'll be watching the Season 3 finale of Voyager or kicking off Enterprise with the double-length pilot episode. Things are picking up, and it's exciting.

There's something to be said for a leisurely pace—taking my time through The Original Series and The Next Generation was enjoyable, because I'd already seen many, if not most, of the episodes and savoring the continual presence of my favorite sci-fi franchise in my weekly routine. An episode here and there was fine by me.

Things were different by the time we got to Deep Space Nine—I'd watched most of the first two seasons (and a scant handful of episodes after that) when the show was first on the air, but lost interest when they didn't boldly go anywhere! Now, two decades later, I have a greater appreciation of the character interactions and darker themes explored by the show. Entranced by the compelling stories and recognizing the huge gap in my Star Trek education that demanded to be filled, I was eagerly watching two, three, even four episodes at a clip whenever we sat down to watch DS9. I was hooked.

As soon as I had my first special weapon for this playthrough of Mega Man 7, I started discovering and remembering all the ways I can show off and goof around in the game. I was having a blast—some of the most fun I've ever had recording videos for YouTube, in fact--and couldn't wait to (a) try my hand at the next stage, and (b) share my enthusiasm for this oft-derided game with the online community. I was hooked.

Having spent so much time with the same few projects in progress, it is supremely gratifying to reach a major milestone, an ending, or even a point where I can see a milestone or an ending. It's rejuvenating to actively feel the anticipation of starting the next phase of something. I've set aside my other side projects to concentrate on these two, but I think I've needed a break from all the short-term satisfactions of blog posts I write in an hour and chipping away at one of the random movies on our ponderous Netflix Instant Queue. It's become a fact of life that I always have two Star Trek series and a Mega Man game going at any given time...but turning the status quo into a temporary situation with a clear endpoint is what I needed—and what I suspect we all need, sometimes—to pull me out of a comfortable rut and place me on a fresh path that's even better.